April update

Completely useless with keeping this blog up to date... Catch up time. We’ve had a nice couple of months – Honey was such a good girl for me at Crufts, getting 3rd in the Singles Agility semi final and then 3rd in the final. We were also on TV – highly exciting! Here are our runs if you haven't seen them. I do think Honey's semi run was better than the final - but I am VERY glad she ran at all as that was my biggest fear of running her at Crufts!



I decided to go down to Cornwall and do a couple of days at Kernow. I took Scandal sheep herding Thursday/Friday – she wasn’t as good as last time, she has lost some of her naturalness. She was more fun last time, mainly because I didn’t really have to do anything as she just ran around like crazy doing everything for me. I’d entered her in a class at Kernow on the Friday and did that and could tell she was tired, so took her out halfway through. Saturday and she took me by surprise – she went up a gear in the 6-7 jumping and she got further and further away from me, I was running a second or so behind her. We managed a clear and she got a 9th. The agility didn’t go quite as planned but still better than yesterday, and Scandal was flying (a little tooo much). Then she got a 2nd in 5-7 jumping, 0.2 behind Angela and Tif who won it. Sunday and we got a 3rd in 6-7 jumping, and E’d in the other two classes, again Scandal working nicely but me just not sharp enough with my commands. She did lovely waits and I think only had 1 pole across 7 classes. Perfect seesaw in all classes too :)

I’d entered Honey in an agility class each day and decided a different tactic with her. On the Saturday, I warmed her up and then just queued with her and did virtually nothing – except queue. Well, she went as fast as she usually does when I put loads of effort into exciting her, and won it! On the Sunday I did the same and she went even faster, as fast as she does in training (she’s only ever run this fast in the ring once before – almost a year ago!), I found her sooo funny as she was screaming and was just mental, so we got e’d quite a few times, but she is just so much fun when she’s like that. She actually behaved really well all weekend – didn’t escape from the garden at all and didn’t run off when we went to the beach. The only annoying thing she did was carry everyone’s shoes around that were in the awning and then leave them outside… especially annoying when it rains.

End of an era for me as I retired Rix from veteran/anysize at this show. Both his hearing and eyesight seem to be deteriorating, especially in the last month or so (although I sometimes think the deafness is slightly selective), and he can be a bit unsteady on his back legs. He doesn’t really do anything, he’s just always ‘there’, and I like that feeling, maybe it’s just a weird safeness/security that he’s around. He’s the quietest, easiest dog in the house, and loved being in Jess and Lee’s caravan where he would invite himself up on the sofa and then use his selective deafness when it was kicking out time and just keep very still and pretend he was invisible. Bless him. He still comes out with us on our long walks although I’m not sure he will be up to doing 10 miles when (if) the weather gets warmer. Saw his sister at Kernow too… haven’t seen her for about 5 years… a dog walked past with a face sooo like Ricky and I just watched it thinking ‘wow, that looks so like Rix’ and then realised the connection. I do love my Rixstar.

Scandal’s brothers have been doing well – Rave going G7, Chilli winning G5 jumping and Rocky winning G3/4 jumping – clever boys :-)

People keep asking how Jed’s doing – he’s doing well. We aren’t doing a lot with him – he has a long way to go before I start training him properly. I'm just playing about with him at the moment doing little bits, and he is gradually maturing. He LOVES his training, sometimes a little too much. He adores running in his CaniX harness, G ran 14 miles with him last week :-O and the worst thing is Jed was still bounding around in the garden when they got back… he never seems to run out of energy. I am fairly certain he will eventually compete in agility (4 months ago and I was very sure he wouldn't), it's more of a question of when will he be ready - I'm not in any rush. I think it's likely that it will be next year, but I may put him in a couple of classes at the end of this year, to see what he'll be like. We go to a lovely foundation agility class with him and he can now work off lead for most of the class, with about 8 other dogs there, and he's fine - a dog (which resembles a rabbit) ran up to him a couple of weeks ago and he just calmly sniffed it in delight, as opposed to 6 months ago when it would probably not have been the same story! His lifeskills have improved massively and he’s now fairly ‘normal’... just need to keep on top of it and slowly build on it now.